Flatland.  They differ very much, one from another; they have very different degrees and kinds of justification; it may be difficult in the case of some of them to strike a balance between the gain and the loss.  The remarkable thing—­the ominous thing, if we are to suppose that the present tone of thought will long persist—­is that the loss involved in the flattening of life, as such, apparently almost wholly fails to get consideration.  I say apparently, because there is, no doubt, a deep and strong undercurrent of opposition which, sooner or later, will manifest itself; in speaking of “ruling tendencies” we are apt to mean merely the tendencies that are most in evidence.  But after all, it is to these that criticism of contemporary life and thought must, of necessity, be chiefly directed.

As I have already indicated, the attack on individuality and personal dignity in the universities was met in a spirit that is highly gratifying, and which is quite out of keeping with the tendency that I am discussing and deploring.  Yet it is doubtful whether, outside the circle of the universities themselves, and of those individuals who are thoroughly imbued with the university spirit, there is any true realization of what it is that constituted the head and front of that offending.  If some bureau of research were to present a formidable array of figures showing that the “output” of professorial work could be increased by so and so many per cent. through the adoption of some definitely formulated system of “scientific management,” it is by no means certain that the scheme would not receive powerful support in the highest quarters of efficiency propaganda.  We should be told just how many millions of dollars a year we are spending on university education, and just how many of these millions go needlessly to waste.  Even the opponents of the “reform” would probably find themselves compelled to use as their most powerful argument this and that example of great practical results which have flowed from letting men of genius go their own way.  It would be pointed out that many an investigation which, to the authorities of the time, appeared wholly unpromising, turned out to be of cardinal value.  We should be warned that what we gain in a thousand cases through time-clock and card-catalogue methods, might be lost ten times over through the shackling of the initiative of a single man of unrecognized genius.  And all this would be very much to the purpose; but it is not upon any such special pleading that the case ought to be made to rest.  The loss that would be suffered transcends all these concrete and definable instances of it.  It would be pervasive, fundamental, immeasurable.  Grievous as might be the injury caused by the prevention of specific achievements of exceptional importance, this would be as nothing in comparison with the intellectual and spiritual loss entailed by the lowering of the human level, the devitalizing of the intellectual atmosphere, which must inevitably follow upon the application of factory methods to university life.